I was born and raised in Puerto Rico in a working-class family. Like many working-class families, especially in Philadelphia and in the county, my story is the story of struggle. I grew up in a family where my parents had to take multiple jobs to make ends meet. Growing up, we struggled to afford a home. We, for a number of years, weren’t able to afford health insurance. My parents also struggled to send me and my brother to school.

So, it is pretty clear from my platform and story why I am a democratic socialist and why I know the importance of education, housing, and health care. That’s why I am fighting to make sure those three things are ensured as human rights and that we have local elected officials that are willing to fight for that. Then, as a scientist, a big part of my platform is a municipal Green New Deal for Philadelphia that combats climate change and transitions our economy to a green new economy.

Puerto Rico is a place where political power is really limited due to colonialism. There are all these injustices that are caused by the imperialism and colonialism imposed on the island for hundreds of years, first by Spain and now by the United States, that still plague the island and its economy. A lot of that was part of my upbringing, seeing these injustices and there being no real political process for us to get out of it. There is a lot of that in me, and that helps me bring the passion to fight injustice. And I get to Philly and it’s a “majority-minority” city and the largest poorest city in the country where racial inequality affects how government works, just like in Puerto Rico.

The tipping point for me when I decided to run was asking myself: “How come I grew up in Puerto Rico — in a place that is so limited in many ways and especially politically — and I still have enough resources and opportunities to get a good education here in Philadelphia while children like me growing in similar conditions in this city don’t have those opportunities? Why is our local government failing our children? Why is our local government failing our black and brown communities and our working-class communities?”

While I was doing my PhD in cancer biology at the University of Pennsylvania, I led the Penn Science Policy & Diplomacy Group and we focused on informing policy with science. We looked at science- and evidence-based processes to inform and create policy. Through that I started organizing in Philly with 314 Action, a national group based in Philly that endorses scientists running for office.

Through that group and while organizing for the grad student union that we tried forming at Penn, I met Molly Sheehan. who was then running in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 5th congressional district. She became a friend and a mentor, and I volunteered as a policy analyst on her campaign. On that campaign, I did a lot of research on immigration and health care policy, especially on H1B visa programs and single payer health care, especially showing how the latter would be more cost-effective than our current private health insurance system.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was the major union helping us students to organize. I had my trainings and then had conversations with other students about GET-UP, workers’ rights, and their experiences, trying to persuade them to sign pledge cards. It was a lot of outreach work, especially reaching out to Spanish-speaking students among whom fears were especially real, due to possible repercussions from going against the University of Pennsylvania. So I did a lot of that outreach in Spanish and helped to expand GET-UP to student communities that might have been more hesitant.

Philly has given me so much. This is where I came out of the closet. I see myself having a family here one day and I really want to contribute to Philadelphia. I also see a lot of people who, like myself, haven’t had our voices heard in our political process and with our elected officials.

And there is a lot we can do at the local level. People tend to focus a lot on the national level, but our city has a huge poverty problem and a really big racial divide. Twenty-six percent of the population in Philly lives below the poverty line and most of those families are black and brown families. In terms of policies, we shouldn’t have legislation like the ten-year tax abatement that gives exemptions to corporations on paying property taxes for ten years, while long-term homeowners face rising taxes, gentrification, and displacement. There is also the soda tax, a regressive tax that falls on working-class folks and not corporations, that especially hurts communities of color in food deserts that already lack access to healthy foods.

Ultimately many of these policies are crafted from people at the top without much care for people who are working class, who are the 99 percent. As democratic socialists, it is really important that we craft policies and have local elected officials put working people over profits. I am running because I want children growing up here in similar conditions I did to have a good education, a home to live, and access to health care.

Absolutely. We do a lot of that through DSA. I am a big labor person; unions are extremely important for building power for working-class politics. So, we really need to help unions expand into new sectors and incorporate more workers.

I am an activist; I am all for amplifying our voices. Elected officials are always saying that they want to be a voice for the voiceless. We don’t need you to speak for us. We already have a voice. We need you to pass the microphone. Let us speak for our communities.

If elected on May 21, I would be the first ever openly out councilmember in Philadelphia’s history; I would be the first democratic socialist, the millennial, the only one with a PhD on council, the only Latino city council-member at-large, and the only one with a health care background. These are all communities and groups that have been left out of the conversation and lacking a seat at the table for way too long. We need to acknowledge that and be open to having people speak for our own communities.

My relationship with the party structure is limited. I am a new candidate, left of everyone, and a democratic socialist. But I will say that I have good relationships with most of the candidates running. I agree that there are people like Councilmember Allan Domb, who profit from the ten-year tax abatement and who is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me, who we shouldn’t have on the council. But it’s a good relationship with most people, people I respect and who have done good policies.

But I will also bring the fight and the grit. Getting activism into city council and working with activist partners will be really important, especially in getting these conversations to flow to where they have to go and crafting policy in ways that benefit working people. So, I think by being on city council, I will be able to bring people to the left and enact policies that benefit working people.

Like everything, including my candidacy and DSA as an organization, our best work comes out when we build coalitions — and DSA is really good at that. So we need to make sure that we are building bridges and that putting important issues at the forefront, fighting for that and bringing in as many people as we can in the process. We are creating and sustaining a movement for everyone.

I think Philly DSA has this really big opportunity, especially if I get elected to council, to build power for the organization and help drive that activism into getting stuff done to address the issues that affect Philadelphians on a daily basis.

Let’s go back to the ten-year tax abatement, a policy that’s depriving our schools of $386 million every ten years. Our schools are in a very dire moment when the buildings themselves are falling apart. They are covered in asbestos, lead paint, and toxic mold. We see the impact on children, like the asthma rates which are higher than most places all over the county. It’s atrocious and inconceivable that we as a city has allowed this to happen. We really need to make that our priority.

For a while before I started the campaign, I was going to some meetings of the immigration group within the Caucus of Working Educators [a rank-and-file teachers caucus within the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers], and I heard firsthand the educational resources children needed, especially immigrant children. So it’s important work that these teachers — from the Caucus of Working Educators, Our City Our Schools Coalition, and other groups — are leading.

People constantly talk about schools, yet we don’t see that importance reflected from the policies that are actually made. Instead we have policies like the ten-year tax abatement which are depriving our school system. We need to eliminate that and put that money in our schools. And not only on the physical infrastructure side: we know that most of our public schools lack counselors, teachers, nurses, and teacher’s aides, all of whom are overworked and underpaid. To me, that’s an extreme moral failure and we need to do everything we can to ensure that our children are going to healthy schools.

On housing, we have an extremely high eviction rate. And most evictions happen to single mothers of color. We really need legislation like rent control and just-cause eviction legislation. The city has done some good recently, with input from housing justice activist groups including in Philly DSA, like getting tenants lawyers if they are evicted from their homes. It gives tenants who don’t have the means to get legal defense to combat injustice from landlords, especially slumlords.

Going back to the ten-year tax abatement again, homeowners in the city are basically subsidizing corporate giveaways through the ten-year tax abatement, while taxes are increasing consistently for working people. What we have are policies that are gentrifying our neighborhoods.

I think that is extremely important. We have the privilege here in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania to elect our judges. We really need to be building a bench of judges who are accountable to people and be fair to everyone, especially communities of color which are consistently targeted by the criminal justice system here in Philly. I am extremely happy that it is happening, and we should build power in all three branches — in the mayor’s office, city council, and judge offices.

I think Philadelphia has a huge untapped power because we are the biggest city in the state. And we can use that and leverage our position within the state to decide statewide elections, especially with the other progressive end which is Pittsburgh.

But there is a lot of work to do for us. I think it is important for us right now, right this moment, to build coalitions and bring people into the movement across the state. We build power when we connect the threads that unite us and build a movement on top of that. That’s the job of my lifetime.

Absolutely. Pittsburgh DSA has been doing great work. We also have BuxMont DSA, Delco DSA, and other DSA groups in the suburbs and other areas doing good organizing work. But we should also acknowledge that there are groups like Indivisible that have formed all over the state. These are groups that we need to engage that are already doing a lot of work and know their communities really well. So we should have those conversations about how we can move our communities and the state forward in the direction we desire.

My friends are Philadelphians. We are running a grassroots campaign that is accountable to the people. I am running to represent and be there for the 1.5 million people of Philadelphia, including the communities I am from. The big corporate interests — like developers and fossil fuel companies — who have a grip over our policies and others who stand against working-class Philadelphians are our enemy.